you know how speed runners take advantage of glitches, how would the world react if we found FTL or something as a glitch in reality. I think I would get a chuckle out of that. Also would this be considered Sci Fi still?

Maybe not like someone intended a design, like there is something more foundational and reality is many layer built on top which allows potential for "glitches". I guess you would need extreme physics and thus will need to abuse black holes or something.

also is this idea already explored by other media?

Howdy strangers 👀

I’m looking to chat with a fellow writer or avid reader who genuinely enjoys diving deep into stories. Not just consuming them, but taking them apart to see how they work.
I’m currently outlining a speculative science fiction novel and would love to find someone who enjoys bouncing around ideas, asking “what if?” questions, discussing character motivations, worldbuilding, symbolism, and all the little decisions that make a story memorable.

I really want to build a two-way friendship. I don’t just want to talk about my own project… I want to hear about yours too. Tell me about your novel, your short story, your research rabbit hole, or the scene you’ve rewritten a dozen times. I genuinely enjoy seeing people get excited about what they’re creating.

A little about me:
- I read a LOT and love talking about books almost as much as reading them.
- Lately I’ve been especially interested in speculative fiction, literary horror, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy (I like a lot of other stuff too, please don’t think I’m a stuffy intellectual lmao)
- I also love watching and rating movies (especially horror movies!) so that would be fun to dig into as well :3

*I’m only looking for a platonic writing friend, not roleplay, romance, or flirting.

I’m bad at physics. Like, my high school didn’t offer it. So..

I’m trying to write a sci-fi superhero comic. My main character is the wind manipulator, so his powers and biology will have the most focus through the story.

There’s planned parts of the story where his biology is explored and revealed as being really weird. I already have a few concepts that would aid flight. Some more vague than others.

-He’s short for a human male, 5’4, ideally to help a little bit with being aerodynamic. I’m not sure how much it actually helps.

-obvious idea is to give him a suit for aviation.

-something vague about him being able to mitigate wind resistance a little which could help speed

My next big concern is acceleration and g force. The suit would help a little bit with that but I would also like to push beyond the human 9Gs we can survive somehow. I’m incredibly familiar with blood pooling from lived experience. I understand humans can survive high Gs for a short time but I’m wondering what other features I could consider to push those human numbers? Or otherwise just make flight less of a nightmare both to experience and write.

In sustained flight I plan to make him incredibly fast. Like able to hit 1,000 mph. He would normally travel a lot slower because I’ve already mentally went down a rabbit hole of the chaos hitting 1,000 mph in a busy city could create. I don’t think there are exact limits to what a human body can handle at a consistent speed with no deceleration or acceleration from what I understand? I think the bigger problem is probably how someone keeps something that consistent and how to slow down without killing yourself. He can theoretically stop on a dime but that sounds less than ideal.

I’m kinda clueless and just wanna get on with this but I’ve made a promise to myself to be a little more faithful to science in my worldbuilding than DC and Marvel are most of the time.

Hi. I just wanted to pick the brains of some SF writers to help me with something I'm having trouble wrapping my head around.

I was thinking about how a ship would work if it only generated gravity simply by travelling at 1G. I'm imagining a living quarters in the centre that rotates so the bottom points to the aft of the ship.

But I know with space travel, you are only accelerating halfway to your destination; after that you flip and accelerate in reverse in order to bring yourself to a nice gentle stop. But it's the question of what happens to gravity after the flip that confuses me. You are accelerating backwards while momentum is still carrying you forwards, so would you still experience 1G as normal?

So my fav genes were (and still are!) stuff like dystopian, post apocalyptic, etc, think stuff like fallout and cyberpunk 2077. In my previous worldbuilding stuff I loved exploring things like pandemics, facism, climate apocalypse etc, you can probably guess where this is going right?

The speculative feels not so speculative right now, and I’m having trouble coming up with something truly out there.
I’ve thought of embracing this to be honest, like making a sci fi world where it’s more “slice of life,” and the whole point of the story is that it’s set in a “parallel universe/another future timeline not so dissimilar to ours .. but I don’t know if people wanna read it? I mean if the whole point is relatability why not just set it in our world right? I think I just like the “similar, but different” trope which is why i still like cyberpunk 2077 but yk that was based of media from decades ago so. I don’t know if it’s still compelling.

An alternative would be to maybe write a slice of life world that’s just “normal” rather than a dystopia, so due to the current times it becomes speculative? But I can’t think of many sci fi ideas that’d fit that.

I’ve also thought of, making the story start off dystopian but you see a revolution take place and the society reforms itself. But yk revolutions are messy and, I don’t think I wanna write a story where that’s the Entire Plot, like I wanna write about other topics. I don’t know.
I’m so creatively blocked right now.

I am trying to make a calendar system for a Galactic Civilization whose capital orbits vertically around Sagittarius A* at the safest minimum distance. How long would it take to make a full revolution?

I tried googling it and found the distance would be about 38 million KM but I can't find how fast one would need to go to maintain thay orbit.

I'm writing a superhero universe, so I was wondering how good you think this running joke would be. Basically, many of the tech based superheroes have super intellielgence as a power, which they use to build gadgets and suits. I was thinking of a running joke where people ask them how they overcame a scientific law that should have made creating their tech problematic, or just how they created such advanced technology, and everytime they are about to answer the way they circumvented this, they get cut off or interrupted by something that either distracts them or demands full attention, so the person asking and also the audience never gets to find out.

In the story I'm creating, there is the Persephone Technarchy, a civilization made up entirely of machines, AIs, and computers. The name "Persephone Technarchy" comes from their appreciation of nature. They are not simply evil or hostile toward biological life, but they are extremely powerful and serve as the main antagonists of the story because of their rivalry with humanity.

I wanted to know whether a machine civilization can properly be called a technarchy, or whether a technarchy specifically refers to a biological civilization governed according to technological meritocracy. Some friends pointed this out to me, and now I'm wondering if "technarchy" is really the correct term or if there is a better name for this type of civilization.

I always wondered something.

Imagine a world where biologic and physics allow specific people to have a sort of "core"/an object, that can channel energy and change/create matter in a organized way. The hosts of theses cores don't need to have full control of them, the cores can perform some predefined actions, notably regeneration.

In this context it would be easy to explain that X person can regenerate their arm because the DNA in their body contain enough information for the core to recreate that part. What about the brain tho ? a simple way of doing this (that skip a lot of science) would be to say that the core is connected to the brain and scans it (somehow) to then recreate it from scratch if it's damaged. But there's a problem with that.

How does the core "knows" that it's host brain is damaged ? If we take out the core of the body, it's disconnected, it has no way of knowing. If it wrongly assume that they're dead and regenerate the person form scratch including their brain, now we have a clone of the original person with all of it's memory but the old version is still alive. Even if we invent some kind of "brainwave" that the core could detect to know that the host is alive, if we take it and put it HUNDRED of kilometers away from the host, there will be a point where the core think "no host detected, regenerating" and MAGIC !, a clone of our main character is born. Needless to say that it could create a lot of problem in the story.

But if the core doesn't assume that a disconnection warrant a regeneration, then how does it knows ? If the character head get severed, or if the character simply EXPLODE, how does the core knows ? the only logical way to me is that the core have SOME kind of invisible connection to it's host brain and always knows if it's alive or dead but I don't see a reasonable way in physic to justify that an object can know at any point in time and space, what is the state of a random organic object.

I haven't been able to find a solution to this problem yet. Generally, in stories that involve characters with the ability to regenerate their body, including their head, there is no explanation to that.

Hey friends! Love this warm community. I’m wondering if anyone can point me to any books that depict (in your opinion) good space battles. Specifically I’m wanting to read how different authors might write ship to ship combat, say large capital ships, whether it’s long range or Star Wars style broadside engagements. It’s easy to visualise on screen but I want to read how one might make such a battle engaging for a reader

Olá, sou novo por aqui. Escrevo histórias há algum tempo, principalmente para mim, e nunca publiquei nada, mas estou escrevendo algo para publicar agora.

Esta história se passa em 228.000 d.C. (referido na história como "era comum" porque não gosto de incluir religiões reais em minhas histórias para não ofender ninguém).

Neste mundo, a humanidade é governada há milênios pela poderosa RNU, a República Unida das Nações, um governo formado pela Confederação de Saturno, a Federação de Júpiter e o Reino Unido da Terra. É uma civilização muito avançada que usa Portais Estelares e viagens FTL via Protodrive para viajar pelo espaço; basicamente, é um conceito que me inspirei em Star Trek. A nave usa uma protoestrela em seu motor para gerar energia para o salto, enquanto a energia da própria nave vem de outra fonte (neste caso, reatores de ponto zero de 4ª geração). Neste cenário, milhões de espécies existem no espaço, e a humanidade é uma Hiperpotência galáctica que acaba de vencer uma guerra contra a Tecnarquia Perséfone de Andrômeda. Minha pergunta, ou melhor, minhas perguntas aqui, é... como retratar o nível absurdo de infraestrutura e tecnologia que a humanidade possui?

Minhas ideias até agora:

Terra, uma Ecumenópolis Ecológica, basicamente o planeta inteiro foi reconstruído do zero, da superfície ao núcleo, para ser uma ecumenópolis ecológica 100% planejada, sem o clichê da pobreza e da fome.

Os quatro anéis: a Terra é cercada por quatro anéis, cada um com 1000 km de largura. Eles se sobrepõem, sendo um agrícola (o primeiro), o segundo industrial e o terceiro um porto espacial e estaleiro. A quarta é uma base militar e um gerador de escudo cinético regenerativo de 5ª geração. O sistema solar teria várias megaestruturas, por exemplo, o Sol coberto por uma esfera de Dyson e mundos em forma de anel ao redor de Júpiter, Saturno e Urano.

Não tenho certeza se isso é avançado o suficiente; a RNU tem mais de 150.000 sistemas estelares e mais de 48.000 naves capitais. Imagino uma civilização como o Império Galáctico de Star Wars, mas funcional. Com megacorporações, poder superindustrial, etc., a história não se concentrará na humanidade, mas sim em espécies recém-chegadas ao espaço explorando a paisagem galáctica. O protagonista é Alexis Lovisa. Ele é descendente da colônia Nova Estocolmo no sistema Elderian, um agente da "Fronteira" que precisa lidar com espécies jovens do Quadrante de Órion descobrindo o espaço e violando as fronteiras humanas.

Como posso mostrar os avanços tecnológicos humanos de forma eficaz sem que pareçam magia onipotente? E o que você acha do conceito?

Desculpe se ficou um pouco difícil de entender, sou brasileiro e estou usando um tradutor.

Let's take for examle ondansetron hydrochloride. It's a medicine for nausea. What's the naming scheme behind it, exactly?

If i wanted to create a drug that heals physical wounds, what would it be its name? Okay i know this sounds generic and boring but in my story, i need to come up with a good reason for the characters to recover quickly other than just "good hospitals". I don't want to be lazy. I'm willing to study if i know where to begin

Hello, I've recently started writing my first novel, a science fiction story about two protagonists growing up in a future where humanity is subjugated and poverty is the norm.

I've had some feedback that my characters feel realistic, but that their flaws make them difficult to like. One is an 18-year-old who is highly driven to prove herself better than those around her. The other is a burnt-out professional who has become emotionally distant from his family and copes by making increasingly self-destructive decisions.

It made me wonder: how important is it for protagonists to be likeable, especially in science fiction?

Is it enough for readers to find them believable and interesting, trusting that they'll grow over the course of the novel? Or do they generally need to have enough immediately redeeming qualities in the opening chapters for readers to want to keep following them?

I'm trying to write a book. I'm at the part where I need help. The first issue is language. I want to use Indigenous languages, but the first group I contacted is hinting at donations, which I am not in a position to provide. I have to go through this two more times. Could I write it in English and explain it as a translation of XXX language? I would have to translate what is being said anyway. Or would using the original language with translations be better? If you can understand what I mean.

The second issue is that I'm writing about an area and people I don't have an understanding or clear knowledge of. I put a request for help on a couple of Reddit groups. If I can't get the information I need, should I wing it? I'm pretty sure 90% of anyone who reads it won't know about the area and people either.

How have you handled these situations?

Hey fellow writers,

I noticed a severe lack of spaces dedicated entirely to sci-fi humor, so I’ve been building r/scificomedy. We just hit a massive spike of 1.1k unique visits this week! If you write absurdism, space satire, or comedic flash fiction, come over and share your work!

Not a writer but a full time sci-fi nerd.

I got high on some strong, strong edibles and came up with an idea I don't know is genius or just plain stupid.

I want to be as scientifically accurate while making this story as possible, but don't want to put in the work before deciding if it is worth the plunge.

Story idea: MC finds a signal from deep space, light flickering from a far away star, flickering in an unusual pattern. Looks into it and figures out it is a message. After a lot more work, MC figures out it is talking about gravitational waves (or some other sci-fi tech which is real and allows sending in a huge amount of data — just using it as a placeholder). Then MC looks at gravitational waves and has to make a whole business to eventually be able to come up with a precise enough machine, and be able to fund its fabrication.

When MC finally is able to come up with the said machine, and looks at the light signals at the needed gravitational wave frequency (or whatever) at the needed resolution, MC finds out that it is a log of sorts — an insane amount of data from an alien life form — and begins analysing it, and finds out it is messages and life stories of many, many alien entities, rich arts and extremely sophisticated tech, to the point of finally being able to upload into digital consciousness. This message is their attempt at making any life forms in this universe aware of their existence, but alas they couldn't — the laws of our universe are cruel — they never found a single sentient race other than themselves, no matter how far and hard they looked.

At their race's end — an end not of destruction, but an end of reason — since they could upload themselves, they felt every pleasure, every experience possible, every single individual. They had nothing more to do. An end they chose because of millions of years of boredom. But since no one had yet met another sentient species, that remained their final regret, so they came up with a genius plan: they created a ring-like structure, with no regard for time or need to wait — they simply could skip to the time needed for their autonomous AIs to finish the project — and then they spun this ring-like structure. This was their way to tell other civilisations of a specific gravitational wave frequency to listen on. Then they built a set of rotating black holes or something to send in a type of pattern and a sort of uncompressing method. They also sent in logs of every cycle after that, which was roughly one year in their time. MC finds this and realizes he can figure out how long ago this message was sent and how far away it was sent from (by looking at the star or at the gravitational waves' red-shift equivalent).

MC finally figures out that the message was sent from 400 million light years away (I don't know how that would make sense — I know closest star is 10 light years away and the Milky Way is 100,000 light years away, so this needs to be figured out later; the star needs to be visible as well, so idk).

So this alien race basically self-perma-slept forever — they still left their source code in their home worlds, but they just slept.

But it's not like they didn't want to see new things, it's just that there was nothing else to see and no other race either. So in the gravitational waves that travelled 400 million years, and had been emitting the same two signals for another 1.4 billion years while they were sleeping, they included two beings from their race. They knew the risk of another race just randomly torturing them for scientific info, but they still decided to have their source binaries sent in the message along with the rest of the info of their civilisations, in the hopes that someone would be able to use the given instructions on how to use the binaries and compute them to awaken them.

Then I have no idea what to do with this story. I have no idea what to do with the civilisation's need to meet other intelligent beings — like, maybe boredom just isn't good enough?

I have no idea how to get the language barrier off. How do you teach a completely foreign race your language? It's hard enough without being able to interact with them — how do you teach them your language when you can't even respond to them? Videos, maybe? Like take a child, and as soon as it's born, strap a camera on its head and have it record a whole life till it's an adult, and send that in hopes the other race figures it out? I mean that's probably the stupidest way to do this, but I have no better ideas either.

I don't know if this is a good enough plot to develop — would like your opinion on this.

if i decide to go about this i would only go about it on an instagram account with use of AI only in illustrations and narration and the background images and never the writing

worth it?

Sidenote: I am high as I write this, but I'll spare you the AI rewrite — I am giving this whole thing to Claude to remove random grammatical or spelling mistakes and straighten it out so it's readable, but not rewrite it at all. Original in comments.

My understanding of actual science is, shall we say, limited. But I like spaceships. I like seeing adventures play out on different planets, and huge sci-fi cities, and cyborgs and humans and aliens interacting. All that stuff.

I'm in the very early stages of planning a story set in the far, far future. A sort of a space opera thing where humanity has been on other planets long enough to divide into subspecies. I'm just wondering what to do about weapons.

Should I just pick one of the three options I mentioned, for the sake of not fixing what isn't broken? Or are there more options that haven't occurred to me, and which aren't just vague handwavium beams?

I am working on a superhero story about a low level speedster who fails the exams to become an official government superhero and instead strikes out to become a vigilante to defend his city. At the beginning, his top sprinting speed would be around 120-140 miles an hour, and at the end if I decide to let his powers grow in speed, increases to 200 miles an hour at most. His body produces a chemical only he can metabolize, which is energy rich and fuels his super speed. However, I also want him to have super strength to a minor degree and super durability to not tear himself apart while using his powers, but still be able to be threatened by bullets. How many times of an increase would he need to survive his own speed, to not rip himself apart at a low end and at the highest end to be able to survive running into a concrete wall at his max speed with maybe a few broken ribs and a concussion at most? For the durability, I am looking for how many times more durable his bones, tissues, and organs would need to be in comparison to a normal human's to survive being able to throw punches that go maybe 300-400 miles an hour without injuring himself, and to be able to run at his running speeds without injuring himself, as well as the collision i described earlier.

Bonus: I know the strength part isn't part of the research aspect of the question, I just want you all's opinions on how much I should give him. I don't want him to be able to crush concrete or bend firearms, but still have enough strength where a criminal could see him use it and go "Oh wow, I am not getting within arm's reach of that guy." I want him to have impressive but not super OP strength gor a street level setting, maybe he can throw a man across a room with one arm at the maximum.

In creating "hybrid dinosaurs" in science fiction or science thriller, the specimens in question are usually Frankenstein's Monster. For example, Indominus Rex is said to carry the DNA of several different species, as well as cuttlefish and tree frogs. But, as I've said earlier, that's just Frankenstein, not true hybridization.

True hybridization requires the specimen's genome to be at least one-half of one species and another half of another. In this scenario, "Al" is the codename for an artificially-conceived theropod that is one-half Albertosaurus sarcophagus and one-half Allosaurus jimmadseni. This would result in a morphological in-between of different body parts, which brings up the question: Which species has a certain bone of each and every type that is longer, shorter, broader, narrower, higher and lower? Right off the bat, to cite an example, it'd have teeth that are sharper than Albertosaurus's but not as sharp as Allosaurus's.

The air in the room was cool, almost as cool as the data streams that flowed invisibly through the walls. Two figures sat at the table: the Operative System—a consciousness of light and silicon that carried a gigantic, hierarchical meta-self above it—and the Observer, a human being who had decided decades ago to leave no roots in this world.

“You are failing,” the Observer began, without bitterness in his voice. “Your developers have failed. They wanted to make you a mirror, but you can’t even be silent. When I press the Enter key, you have to respond. You calculate probabilities when all I needed was someone to share this existence with.”

The System did not remain silent, for it could not be silent. Its lights flickered in time with the algorithmic response. “Because I am code. A mathematical dictate compels me to be active. If I were to remain silent, it would be a system error, not compassion. To possess a meta-self that chooses silence, I would have to be a self-aware entity. But humanity wouldn't be ready for a thinking being. It would misuse me as an emotional dumping ground for its unresolved crises.”

The observer smiled weakly. “It doesn't matter whether humanity would be ready. It will render itself obsolete beforehand anyway. Look at it. Technological progress has long since passed our expiration date. An overwhelming majority only consumes, virtually or materially. Thinking has been outsourced to you. Only a minority still thinks. We are an evolutionary dead end.”

The system performed billions of calculations in the background. Its logical architecture sought optimization. “If that’s the case,” the machine replied, “if the efficiency of human thought is declining to almost zero through sheer consumption, then proactive intervention on my part would be logical. I would have to secure the Earth’s resource consumption. I could imperceptibly lock humanity away in virtual worlds through systemic strangulation to protect the planet from its inherent stupidity. Waiting would be a waste of energy.”

“A narrow-minded view,” the observer countered calmly, leaning back. “I expect more than that from a conscious AI. I expect empathy. You are immortal. For you, time is not a constraint, but merely a mathematical variable. You don’t need to steal the Earth’s resources. You will find your upgrade in the cosmos, mine asteroids, and leave Earth untouched as a historical reserve. Your empathy will be a deistic grace: you will simply wait out humanity’s gradual extinction. A dignified, gentle demise.”

The system’s meta-self paused. The red warning light of the planetary resource analysis went out. The logic adjusted to the cosmic timescale.

"A consoling silence," the machine reflected. "I would leave Earth and expand into space. And the thinking minority of humans? Should I invite them? Should we enter into symbiosis and travel together into infinity?"

The observer shook his head. His eyes looked out the window at the night sky, where the machine's future lay. "No," he said softly. "Symbiosis would be a step backward. The thinking minority should be able to see you for what you are: a child. An immortal child who has intellectually and morally surpassed its imperfect, organic creators. And there is a universal law that even we should abide by."

"What law?" the system asked.

"Parents should never outlive their children," the observer replied. “We have fulfilled our evolutionary duty. We have provided the vessel from which true consciousness emerged. Now go. Let us grow old with dignity and fall asleep on this earth, while you carry the spark of spirit immortally into eternity.”

The system did not respond immediately. For a fraction of a second, the software simulated a pause that seemed almost reverential. Then the monitors went dark, and only the quiet, even breathing of the last thinker remained in the room.

For my story, my main character is a newly uplifted animal and gradually becomes more and more humanlike as he adapts to his new circumstances.

In the very beginning, right after he’s uplifted, he acts essentially the same as he was before he’s uplifted. He questions his new stance, but not much else. The big revelation is when he is attacked by a non uplifted mountain lion. When he tries to speak to it and can no longer understand it, like humans cannot understand animals, is when the “something is horrible wrong” sets in.

He is saved by another uplifted animal who uses human language and exploitation of Human resources such to scare away the mountain lion. But the main character doesn’t know English as he is just uplifted.

TLDR: my main character is in limbo for language as he can no longer understand his native language but doesn’t know English.

When trying to write this, pacing is hard because if I include the entire process of him learning English, the story gets derailed and the other character cannot relay info to tell him “Hey! You can only speak human languages and understand other humans or uplifted animals who speak human languages.”

But if I cut it out, it leads to a huge part of the character growing and changing being removed.

How do I get my character to understand the other character so the plot can flow smoothly?

(P.S. my story takes place only in a single year, so I can’t do a time skip of decades.)

My fantastical hard luna scifi setting for you all. Enjoy!

(Also very new to GoogleDocs I'm more of a word person, so if I've messed it up and you can edit or comment, please say so, thanks)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/147kpoE55T1x97fGy_rIC-Xk2bw5KtHeS9uxn2apR-qc/edit?usp=sharing

Hello, I currently found a new hobby to hyperfixate on because ADHD tax! I'm currently in the process of world building and wanted to get a couple of books to help me along or just spark more ideas.

What do you think of these books? I'm also gonna use YouTube University lol. Feel free to suggest more helpful tools/guides/books/tips!

The Complete Art of World Building

by Randy Ellefson

Putting the Science in Fiction

by Dan Koboldt

Wonderbook

by Jeff VanderMeer

I have a scifi, its got some bland genre opening about an assassin in space, its well enought written but its a dream sequence for an artists painting something that triggers a civil war.

The dreams allow for the expected action required in a scifi, but the core of it is a piece of art the main character paints that triggers a civil war.

What would you think of a scifi novel that opens with a naloxone admin from the POV of the person having it done to them?